


Deep With the First Dead Lies London's Daughter

by jmtorres



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Jossed, Yuletide 2006
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-25
Updated: 2006-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-11 20:41:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/116878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jmtorres/pseuds/jmtorres
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first name Jack Harkness ever called Ianto by was morbid fucker.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deep With the First Dead Lies London's Daughter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [diagon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/diagon/gifts).



The first name Jack Harkness ever called Ianto by was _morbid fucker._ The Torchwood III team had come to London to try to help with the aftermath of what was coming to be called the Battle of Canary Wharf, and Jack Harkness--Captain Jack Harkness, he said, though what he was the captain of, Ianto didn't know, as Torchwood didn't hand out ranks that way--Captain Jack Harkness had walked in like he owned the place and taken over operations. In a way, it was a relief. None of the Torchwood I command staff were left and the military had repeatedly tried to commandeer the situation. Captain Harkness made generals come to heel, barking out orders and energizing efforts that had started to flag with the futility of it all.

Then Captain Harkness came to Ianto with his clipboard, which he took away from him, demanding, "And what are you doing?"

"List of the dead," Ianto said.

"Well, aren't you a morbid fucker," said Captain Harkness.

"Someone has to do it," Ianto said, bristling. "There's a list of the survivors as well, it's just--"

"Shorter," Captain Harkness surmised, flicking pages back to find it. There were only twenty-six names on the living list at the moment. The list of the dead was up to three hundred seventeen, but as rapidly as it was rising, there was little chance of accounting for all of the eight hundred twenty-three staff. So many of them would only be listed as missing.

Captain Harkness was skimming down the list of the dead. He stopped, suddenly, fingers going white on the clipboard. "Rose Tyler," he read. Someone he knew, from the reaction. "There's proof? There's a body?"

Ianto bent his head to look at the list, read his notation. "No body. Eye-witness statement," he answered. Number nineteen on the list. He remembered her; she wasn't on the staff list. A civilian casualty, but-- "The Doctor, the alien we captured before the incident, he reported it." Rose Tyler and Jackie Tyler on the next line, the Doctor had reported them both.

"The _Doctor_?" said Captain Harkness, letting go of the clipboard. Ianto caught it, but Captain Harkness caught him, was gripping him by the shoulders, painfully intense. " _Is he still here?_ "

"N-no," Ianto said, stuttering involuntarily when Harkness shook him. The Doctor (Sir Doctor of TARDIS) was in the Torchwood charter, was meant to be every employee's priority if he appeared, but Captain Harkness had been mourning someone he knew a moment ago. How could he be so obsessed with Torchwood's directives when someone he cared for had died? Had the man no heart?

"What do you mean, no?" Captain Harkness said.

"I mean, he's gone," Ianto said. "I didn't know I wasn't to let him in the police box, I didn't know what the police box _was_ \--"

Captain Harkness let go of Ianto's shoulders with another shake and a growl. He prowled in a tight circle, greatcoat swirling after him, and came back to Ianto again, right up in his face. "You spoke to him? Personally?"

Ianto nodded, swallowed. Felt Captain Harkness's breath on his face. The clipboard with its list of death was a shield over Ianto's chest. It didn't help much.

"What's your name?" Captain Harkness asked.

"Ianto Jones."

"Ianto Jones," Captain Harkness repeated. "I'll speak with you later." He turned on his heel and left, calling for one of his crew.

The first name on the list of the dead was Lisa Hallett. Captain Harkness hadn't even noticed it. Ianto felt like he'd just gone under the gun, been shot at, and survived.

By the time "later" rolled around, after a week of concentrated recovery efforts to resecure all remaining Torchwood assets, the count of the living had risen to twenty-seven. The count of the dead had risen to four hundred sixty-seven Torchwood employees, and Rose Tyler had been put on a different list. Lisa's name had dropped from the top of the list to number one hundred eighty-eight, because Ianto had gotten ahold of a working laptop, input the entire list, and alphabetized it. It had seemed like the professional thing to do.

Professionalism, Ianto had decided, was clearly the best way to impress Captain Harkness. His obsession with Torchwood strictures to the point of setting aside his personal life completely; the way he never seemed to sleep; the way he demanded everyone keep working as tirelessly as himself: they all pointed to a persona of professionalism and hard work as the way to win him over.

Ianto had to win him over. He couldn't stay in London, there was no place in the Torchwood I ruins to hide Lisa. Torchwood III would be better, and it would be home. Five years ago, he'd gone to London to work for Torchwood, and thought it very grand, but now he found the idea of Cardiff comforting.

Captain Harkness wanted to talk about the Doctor. Ianto wanted to talk about a job.

He straightened his tie (he'd managed to find a tie) and went into Captain Harkness's office. It was a makeshift affair, a folding card table for a desk with stacks of papers all over and standard ten-inch biocontainment jar with what looked like a human hand. Why the captain had taken it out of Ms. Costello's ongoing inventory, Ianto didn't know.

"Ianto Jones. Sit down," Captain Harkness said, gesturing at a box of files. It made for a low seat, but the captain's was the same. Ianto sat. "All right. You said the Doctor was captured. What do you know about that?"

"Not much," Ianto said. "I wasn't involved in that, I just read some of the chatter on the network. I know Director Hartman was handling it personally. But I didn't see him until after."

Captain Harkness fiddled with his wrist comm, which, that didn't look like any of the standard Torchwood accessories--for one thing, it was set in _leather._ A moment later, a hologram popped up, a man's face, slightly balding, big ears, blue eyes. "This him?" Captain Harkness asked.

"No," Ianto said, confused. "It was someone else entirely. It wasn't--is that meant to be the Doctor? Did I speak to an imposter?"

"Just tell me what he looked like," Captain Harkness said, pressing a button to dissipate the hologram.

"Yes, sir," Ianto said, belatedly recalling that he'd meant to offer the captain that form of respect. He fold his hands in his lap and tried to focus. "He was younger than that man you just showed me. He had dark brown eyes, light brown hair. Um, his nose was pretty big, pointy. He was about as tall as me--six foot or so--he looked thin."

"What was he wearing?" the Captain prompted.

"A suit," Ianto said. "Pinstripe. Trainers." He remember seeing the trainers over the edge of his clipboard.

"And what did he say to you?" Captain Harkness said. He seemed almost excited now, slowly tapping his open mouth with a pen.

"He asked me if I was the bloke writing down the names of the dead," Ianto recalled. "He said he had a name for me. Rose Tyler." Ianto watched Captain Harkness's expression. It hardened for a moment, but that was all. Heartless, entirely.

"What else did he say?" Captain Harkness said.

Ianto opened his mouth to speak, and felt like something was being drug up out of him, inexorably. He wouldn't have thought he had the exact words memorized, but they seemed as clear as if the Doctor were speaking to him now. "He said, 'She's gone. She saved you all, damn you.' He was--angry."

"He would have been, yes," Captain Harkness agreed. No reaction to the idea that this girl whose name he knew had done something heroic, by the Doctor's account. Just the intense focus on the Doctor.

"And then he said," Ianto remembered, "'Her mum, too. Write that down. Jackie Tyler.' I asked him what his name was, for the log, and he said, 'Haven't got one. Don't need one, do I? I'm not dead.' I tried to tell him I was trying to keep track of the reports, and he signed it--you saw--Doctor." Ianto drew a deep breath. "That was it. He just turned 'round and left. I didn't even realize what it meant, _Doctor_ , until the police box started to go."

"That's so like him," the captain reflected. "Never sticks around to clean up after himself."

Ianto had meant to mention the idea of joining Torchwood III sometime before now. Had meant to maybe even bargain with it, suggest he could remember more if Captain Harkness would only take him. And here he was at the end of the story, and he'd never even veered from it. "Sir," he said. "There was something else I wanted to speak to you about."

Captain Harkness's attention was back on him. It was fairly disconcerting, that regard. "Yes?" he asked.

"I wanted to request a transfer," Ianto said. "To Torchwood III. To--to work under you." And he'd sworn to himself he wouldn't let his voice slip unsteady like that, but it was so difficult to keep an even tone with the captain staring at him.

Captain Harkness said, "You're hired."

Too easy. Too easy. The second time Ianto felt as if he'd cheated death in the captain's presence. He hadn't even had to make a case for himself, hadn't had to fight to be allowed out of the rebuilding--such euphemism, burial, really--in London. He was out of this trap.

He said, "Thank you, sir."

Captain Harkness said, "Welcome aboard."


End file.
